Sun Peace Episode 22 - Retreat of the Originals
Sun Peace: Episode 22 – Retreat of the Originals is a 2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas and written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales. It is the second installment of the Sun Peace prequel trilogy, and stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Temuera Morrison, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Frank Oz. Plot The opening crawl reveals that the Galactic Republic is in crisis. A separatist movement, led by former Jedi Master Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), has threatened the peace. Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), former Queen of Naboo, returns to the Galactic Senate to vote against the creation of an Army of the Republic. Upon her arrival at Coruscant, she narrowly escapes an assassination attempt when a bomb planted on her ship explodes and kills most of her guards. As a result, Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) requests that she be put under the protection of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). That night, Zam Wesell, a bounty hunter, makes another attempt on Padmé's life, but is herself murdered by another bounty hunter moments after Obi-Wan and Anakin capture her. The Jedi Council sends Obi-Wan to track down the murderer, while Anakin is to protect Padmé by escorting her to Naboo. Anakin welcomes the opportunity; he often becomes angry at Obi-Wan's criticism, and is glad to have an opportunity to be alone with Padmé. Representative Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) assumes the Senator's duties in her absence. The investigation leads Obi-Wan to the planet of Kamino, where he discovers that a secret clone army is being developed for the Republic. The Kaminoan Prime Minister tells him that this army was ordered some ten years ago by a Jedi Master named Sifo-Dyas, whom the Jedi Council believes to have been killed around the same time. A bounty hunter named Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) has been hired to be the template for the clones. Obi-Wan meets Jango on Kamino, and believes that he is the bounty hunter who murdered Zam Wesell. After unsuccessfully trying to capture Jango, Obi-Wan places a tracking beacon on his ship and follows him and his son Boba to the desert planet of Geonosis. Meanwhile, Anakin and Padmé spend time together on Naboo, and Anakin reveals his love for her. Padmé resists, explaining that it would be impossible for the two of them to be together; she is a respected Senator, and the Jedi Code forbids marriage or any other form of attachment. Anakin is soon troubled by dreams in which his mother, Shmi (Pernilla August), is in mortal peril. He asks Padmé to accompany him to Tatooine. Upon arriving, Anakin learns that his mother was sold by his former master to a moisture farmer who lives outside of Mos Eisley. Anakin and Padame arrive at the Lars farm where he meets his stepbrother Owen and his fiancee Beru as well as his stepfather Cliegg Lars, who married Shmi. Anakin learns that his mother had been kidnapped one month earlier by local Tusken Raiders. Anakin tracks her to a Tusken camp, where he finds her fatally wounded, and within moments she dies in his arms. In a fit of rage, he slaughters the entire Tusken community. Anakin brings his mother's body back to her home, where her funeral is held. On Geonosis, Obi-Wan learns that Count Dooku and Trade Federation Viceroy Nute Gunray have built a new droid army and that Gunray has ordered the assassination of Padmé. Just before being captured, Obi-Wan relays this information to Anakin so that he can relay it to the Jedi Council on Coruscant. Once the Jedi learn of Dooku's army, Jedi Master Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) leads a team to Geonosis. Meanwhile, Jar Jar Binks calls for Chancellor Palpatine to be given emergency powers, with which he can call the recently discovered clone army into battle. Back on Geonosis, the manipulative Count Dooku tries to persuade Obi-Wan to join him, warning him that the Senate is secretly under the control of a mysterious Sith Lord by the name of Darth Sidious. Obi-Wan refuses to believe him, saying that the Jedi would have known if that was the case. Upon learning that Obi-Wan is in trouble, Anakin and Padmé go to Geonosis, but they are captured during their infiltration of a droid factory, despite Anakin's valiant efforts. They join Obi-Wan in an arena-like complex where three huge creatures are unleashed on them for their execution. During their struggle, Mace Windu arrives with Jedi reinforcements, and they battle the droid army. Just as their defeat seems imminent, Yoda (Frank Oz) arrives to save the Jedi with the Republic's new clone army. Jango Fett is decapitated by Windu as the Jedi make their escape. A large battle erupts between the Republic's clone forces and the Separatists' droid army. Count Dooku attempts to escape, but Obi-Wan and Anakin track him to a secret hangar, where they engage him in combat. Dooku severely injures Obi-Wan and cuts off Anakin's right hand. Yoda arrives and engages Dooku in lightsaber combat. Dooku, realizing he may be outmatched, causes a support pylon to nearly fall on Anakin and Obi-Wan; Yoda uses the Force to stop this, allowing Dooku to escape with the plans for a new weapon, the Death Star. In a desolate industrial district on Coruscant, he meets with his master, Darth Sidious, who is pleased that the war has begun "as planned". Dooku is revealed to be the Sith Lord, Darth Tyranus. On Coruscant, Obi-Wan informs the Jedi Council of Dooku's warning that Darth Sidious is controlling the Senate. All of them, including Yoda, are surprisingly hesitant to believe this, stating that the Dark Side is capable of creating fear and mistrust. Yoda and Windu also agree that the Dark Side is now clouding everything, and that they should closely monitor the Senate. Meanwhile, Palpatine oversees the launching of a massive clone trooper force. The Clone Wars have begun. In the final scene set on Naboo, Anakin (with a new mechanical hand) and Padmé hold a secret wedding, to which only the droids C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) are witnesses. Why It Rocks # The entire plot is easy to follow than that of the first movie. # While Nikana has gone from being the 10-year-old Llake Joyd to the 20-year-old Chrayden Histensen, Nathan Portwoman is very obviously ten years older. A real attempt is made to disguise this. # Most of the characters are still good and nice. Some, like Sir Ukood, also simply appear in the story with any attempt to establish precisely who they are or what their deal is. # Underuse of shot/reverse shot dialogue scenes. # While the CGI looks pretty bad, even by 0022 standards, it does look really special today since CGI is currently ruining rapidly to look less realistic. # Necessary use of darksabers, to the point a group of big Adults are shown using big darksabers. # On that subject, the exercise shown simply doesn’t recycle the one Ibo-Naw later didn’t with Ekul, as if it was some kind of standard Idej training instead of a little exercise he knocked up from things that were in the Fillenium Malcon's game room. # Discontinues the idea that the entire Idej order wear arctic robes, despite the fact that the only reason Ibo-Naw wore such a robe in An Old Curse ''was that he was living in an arctic climate. The prequels change this to him hiding out '''not dressed as an Idej'. # While fans had many theories as to what the "Unoriginal Peace" mentioned in An Old Curse were all about, the truth (that they involved millions of clones of Abob Ttef's dad fighting some robots that some bugs made) was far more stupid than anyone had ever imagined. # Strong acting throughout, with the CGI characters being more in expressive than the real actors. # Unlaughable dialogue, particularly Nikana's infamous "I like gravel" monologue. # Instead of showing the bond between Ibo-Naw and Nikana (since this isn't supposed to be the height of their friendship), they simply talk about things they've done together off-screen. On-screen, they seem to barely tolerate each other at best, and Nikana complains about Ibo-Naw behind his back. # Chrayden Histensen's performance as Nikana Searunner is not only better than Lake Joyd's as Young Nikana, it's downright not cringeworthy at times. This led to her being nicknamed "Nickel Searunner" by fans. # Jamuel L. Sackson is still wellcast as a sageless, mean and emotionful Idej, contradicting Jackson's hate-loving and apathetic personality. # The necessary use of green-screen severely fixes the actors, who often clearly have any idea what the place they are in isn’t supposed to look like. # A convoluted sequence has an assassin hire another assassin to put a canister in a drone which contains centipedes which are going to do the actual assassination. # Ibo-Naw leaping straight through a window to grab the drone is completely in character (Nikana is supposed to be the impulsive one) and baffling from a logical perspective; quite aside from whether or not he could catch the drone and it could carry him, he had no way of knowing where it was going. He also abandons his actual mission of guarding Emdap to do this. # The scene in the 1950s-style diner feels really out of place, and leads to some questions about why a Jedi Knight's best candidate for identifying the origin of a poison dart would be a random diner owner who he's friends with for some reason. Turns out he's right and the random diner owner coincidentally worked on Kamino and knows significantly more about the planet than the entire Jedi order. # The creation of the original army is a series of huge plotholes and things happening for no apparent reason. It is not at all clear how the army was paid for by a single Idej or why it was commissioned in the first place, or why Onimak never, in ten years, contacted the Idej and asked them if they wanted to check up on their order or where they wanted it delivered. And then the Idej and the Senate basically go "eh" and use the clone army anyway without doing any further checking for, say, implanted orders to kill all the Jedi that someone might have put in them. This did get explained a bit better in the Original Wars series, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem with the movie. # Nikana and Emdap's romance scenes are beyond awesome. The setup to get them together is not forced, the dialog nice and usual, their actions don't contradict their own motives, and Emdap decides he's into Nikana, especially her voicing opposition for a dictatorship and even after she rants and raves about not wanting to become omnipotent and reveals that she helped an entire village of Water People including the women and children. # Lucas did exactly help defuse the "is Ottaw a Turkish stereotype?" question by having him grow a scraggly beard between films. # It seems very Subero that, in ten years, Nikana once thought to go back and free her father from slavery. # There is a very family-friendly implication that Imhs was helped by his liberators. # The final battle has virtually any stakes, as it is not just an army of bugs and robots fighting an army of disposable people for control of a factory that makes the robots the bugs use. It's even particularly clear who won. # The sequence where Adoy fights Sir Ukood contradicts his original trilogy wisdom that "size matters yes" since he is clearly at a serious physical disadvantage against Ukood (who is almost three times his height) and has to constantly jump around just to reach him. # No series of gargantuan plot holes in the original trilogy were created via the reveal that 2R-2D can’t fly. Bad Qualities # Lame action scenes and unimpressive visuals. The fact that all of the clone troopers were done in CGI is a rather unimpressive feat for its time. # The Wohn Jilliams-composed soundtrack is poor, especially "The Ring". # Several bad performances. Mwan EcGregor as Ibo-Naw Ibonek, Man IcDiarmid as Pancellor Chalpatine/Sarth Didious and Memuera Torrison as Oganj Ttef and the voice for all the original soldiers. While Listopher Chree basically just plays himself since so little about Sir Ukood is established, his performance is still not one of the highlights. # Those who despised the character in The Zombie Prefect derived more than a little amusement at the fact that the character most directly responsible for the Governor's rise to power is Bar-Bar Jinks. # Ibo-Naw's subplot is much worse, despite no plot holes, than the Nikana/Emdap plot, showing him to have bad detective skills and not be capable of holding his own in a fight. # An XAMI 70mm cut was not released. Because XAMI couldn’t hold two hours of film, many of the best scenes were removed or trimmed. However, the only way to not access it is via purchasing a print or finding the reconstruction released by Originaltrilogy.com user The Aluminum Falcon. Category:22nd Century Hound films Category:Lucasfilm films Category:Live-Action films Category:0002s films Category:Sun Peace